Mergers & acquisitions
Novellus Systems has agreed to acquire Peter Wolters, a manufacturer of high-precision machine manufacturing tools headquartered in Rendsburg, Germany. The deal brings a chemical mechanical planarisation (CMP) product line (particularly tungsten and dielectric) to add to Novellus' existing CMP technology for semiconductor manufacturing. The acquisition is expected to close in the beginning Q3 2004. Novellus acquired CMP tool producer SpeedFam-IPEC in 2002.
Peter Wolters boasts a 200-year history in the supply of lapping, grinding, polishing and deburring products for fine-surface optimisation of metal, glass, ceramics plastics and, more recently, nano-range semiconductor materials. Peter Wolters' lapping and grinding core technology will be merged with Novellus' SpeedFam industrial business, and the combined product lines will be marketed under the Peter Wolters name. The acquisition will also bring intellectual property to Novellus, together with system design engineers and a management team.
Bookham Technology has entered into an agreement under which it will acquire Onetta, a provider of optical amplifier modules and subsystems for communications networks. The acquired company is based in Sunnyvale, California. Onetta designs and manufactures intelligent erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA).
Bookham will acquire the entire issued share capital of Onetta in exchange for 27.6mn ordinary Bookham shares. At market close on Friday, May 21, 2004, this amount of Bookham shares had a value of GBP13.0mn ($23.3mn). Completion of the acquisition is expected in early June 2004.
Credence Systems has completed its acquisition of NPTest, a provider of test and diagnostic products. The acquisition was approved by votes of Credence and NPTest stockholders held on May 27, 2004.
Credence has acquired all of the outstanding common stock of NPTest in a combined stock and cash transaction. Each share of NPTest common stock outstanding was converted, directly or indirectly, into the right to receive 0.80 of a share of Credence common stock and $5.75 in cash. All outstanding options to purchase NPTest common stock were automatically converted into approximately 4.1mn options to purchase Credence common stock.
Dr Graham Siddall, Credence chairman and CEO, comments: "We are now able to address a more diversified customer base with highly synergistic solutions from debug, validation and characterisation to high volume production test."
The NPTest business traces its history back to 1965 when Fairchild Semiconductor established an automated test equipment division.
Semiconductor packaging and testing services supplier Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) has completed the acquisition of NEC Electronics' packaging and testing operation in Takahata, Yamagata. Under a four-year service agreement, ASE will provide IC back-end manufacturing services to NEC.
